So why is this a better idea.

Other countries flirted with the idea of using atomic bombs to move earth too. Most notably the former Soviet Union, but surprisingly Canada also toyed with the notion. Now in the middle of a huge oil and gas boom centred in North Eastern British Columbia and Northern Alberta, the industry pumps millions of litres of oil and gas.

It wasn't all roses for this business. Back in the late 50's engineers grappled with how the hell to get all the oil out of the tar sands and how to get the gas to come out of the ground easier. Production costs were insane, investors were wary of the new sources and oil was not at 90 bucks a barrel yet.

I found an excellent piece on Alberta's dance with lady fission on the Innovation Alberta website (link below) by historian Dr. Michael Payne. In it he describes how the plan was to detonate an atomic bomb at a place called Cheechum Crossing, just outside one of the hubs of the industry, Fort McMurray.

It was the progeny of the same Project Ploughshares that started the dig a canal campaign. A Dr. L. M. Natland of the Richfield oil company actually came up with the idea of setting off an atomic bomb under the Athabasca Oil Sands. The hope was to liberate the oil from the sand. It had long been a puzzle for engineers; so much oil, so close but how to get it out. The engineers, the oil companies and the provincial and federal goverments got together and started planning.

Thankfully, public sentiment and generally touchy world relations (the Cuban missile crisis was barely a year away at this time) stopped the idea from blossoming. It didn`t completely die out for a while though. In 1973 a Canadian oil company called Phoenix Oil actually took out a patent on a method for extracting oil using atomic bombs, but it never went any farther than that.

http://www.innovationalberta.com/article.php?articleid=90